We've been in the throes of redesigning NaturallyCurly.com to make it function better for members. Turns out redesigning a site with 15 years worth of content is no easy task

I wanted to circle back and ask you all what you want to see on NaturallyCurly.com in the future?

What do you think IS working? What ISN'T? Is a certain section of the site not user-friendly? Do we need more wavy hair content? These are all things that have come up in the past and I want to open up the floor for feedback and suggestions.

ALSO: I don't know if you've noticed, but we have a new section of the site: Q&A. Have any of you had a chance to dabble with it? Is it a useful tool, given that we have CurlTalk already? I see CT as a place for conversations, awesome friendships and really connecting. But some people just want a hard and fast answer to their question, which is what Q&A is supposed to be. Yes? No? Hate it? Let me know!

I noticed the Q&As and thought that the questioners would be better of being directed to the forum where they would get a better response. This is due to some of the questions had been repeatedly asked on the forum.

While I like the articles the categorising of quite a few of them is really bad. For example I see one of the rare type 2 articles and they have more focus on type 3 hair.

Plus most of the articles that talk about products make no reference to hair properties.

I'd seen the Q & A section in the past. It really didn't make an impression on me. People do ask their questions on Curl Talk, and get a lot of answers most of the time, so it's redundant, IMHO. If you look, there aren't many answers in to most of the questions. "Q & A" kind of makes it sound like the answer is "correct." As with anything else, the answer is only as good as the knowledge of the person who responds.

I'd love to see the search function work better. I can only hope that people ask the same questions over and over again because they can't find the answer when they search.

It can be next to impossible to bring up new messages in long threads. When I click on links to specific messages in threads I've subscribed to, I will often be taken to the first message in the thread. The links don't come through at all on my tablet.

I'm wondering if there's a way to tag somebody in a post. So say if I'm replying to something someone said, instead of having to quote their message, it'd be cool to be able to tag their name and then they get a notification about it.

Don't know if that'd be possible or not, but I think it would be a lot easier, especially if the thread is really long and there are some simultaneous conversations going on.

I'm wondering if there's a way to tag somebody in a post. So say if I'm replying to something someone said, instead of having to quote their message, it'd be cool to be able to tag their name and then they get a notification about it.

Don't know if that'd be possible or not, but I think it would be a lot easier, especially if the thread is really long and there are some simultaneous conversations going on.

Originally Posted by BotticelliBrit

I completely agree with this! I think it would be very useful, especially in terms of responses.

Also, I'm not sure if it does this already, but when using the search function, does it pull up the latest thread with that information? I typically search and search through the results to see if anything within the last two years has been posted in relation to what I was looking for. Just wondering. =)

With the previous redesign, I had no clue where the CurlTalk link was, and it was all the way at the bottom of the site. Everything is just oddly positioned on the front page and is really big, so in order to get to the links that I visit most often, I have to scroll allllll way the down to the bottom. It would be helpful to have those links at the top of the page, then all the content below, if that makes sense. I sometimes miss the little CurlTalk text link in the midst of all the image buttons. I liked the design before that a lot, it was a bit more user friendly. I do agree that a lot of the information is geared toward the 4's. What I, and probably a lot of other people, have trouble with is looking for information on what ingredients or types of products to use on a certain type of porosity. Sure, there are product suggestions for curl patterns, but it doesn't leave me with the knowledge of what ingredients I should be looking for or avoiding for my porosity. An article on that would be super helpful, with a bit more detail than what I've already read. Granted, everyone's hair is different, but general guidelines would be a starting point. If it's out there, I have yet to find it.

I personally love the Q&A section, I frequently go one there and answer questions. It's a great place for simple questions with a quick answer. The issue is that none of the questions are monitored and I've been avoiding the whole section out of frustration. I love to help people, but they are the same questions over and over again. Some are unanswerable, such as people asking for their hair type with no picture attached. There are vague questions like, "what are good hair products for 3b hair?" I'm finding that the people using the Q&A section are just those who are too lazy to explore the site. I don't know how to fix the issue, but it's driving me nuts because there are people with real questions that are bumped down to page 3 because of all of the silly repeated questions flooding in. When the section was new, the questions were great, now it all went downhill.

I'm also finding that most info is geared towards type 4 hair, but also that the quality of info for wavies and loose 3s is sub-par. Not only that, but I find that most product suggestions for loose curlies are not CG approved.

As for the product section, I would like a option that weeds out polyquats, as a lot of people have issues with them. Maybe an icon that warns of them, or shows they aren't in there.

This isn't as important, but the photo section is crazy. I try to see 3a pictures, and I get everything but. It amazes me that somehow type 4s end up in a section for wavy photos.

I feel like I'm coming across as tearing this website apart. I'M NOT! I love naturallycurly.com to pieces and it saved my hair, these are just little things I've been noticing.

It can be next to impossible to bring up new messages in long threads. When I click on links to specific messages in threads I've subscribed to, I will often be taken to the first message in the thread. The links don't come through at all on my tablet.

Originally Posted by Morgan_Adcock

1 -- i recently noticed that once you are in that thread where a search will put you, instead of going thru the entire thread, once you are on the thread, there is a 'search this thread' function on the blue horizontal menu. there, you can further put in the specific word, phrase you are looking for and it will bring you to it.

2 -- i agree with kathymack's response to the Q&A section. they are much better off searching and looking thru curl talk, or even putting the question as a new thread there. there is no 'correct' answer, so to give a 'quick and hard' answer is impossible. hence, i would not bother to answer in that format. honestly, i can think of many questions they could ask, and there just isn't a quick, simple answer.

3 -- i agree about the articles, many not researched or edited, just some info lifted from the forums and frequently not accurate. i generally have stopped reading them. however, i can see where the occasional visitor to nc would be caught by them. it is what brought me to this site, so i think they are a good introduction.

4 -- the 'notifications' link still doesn't do anything. when someone likes a post, the notification brings you back to that person's profile. ????

5 -- the filters in the photo search format still do not work, rendering what could be a useful format useless. i believe this has been brought up before.

i think naturally curly is undergoing an identity crisis. is it a business, with quick and simple to pull people in? while i was not around in the very beginning of nc, i did start lurking in early 2006 when it was still pretty small and seemingly more 'scientific-bent' than now.

i know that if it doesn't bring in income, nc won't be here. the reality is nc has to do whatever will bring that in. as a self-employed woman, i totally understand, 'it's business,' and admire what they have done, bringing essentially a blog to a full-blown, very famous business. and understanding what it is, i am grateful to have this site as i do find lots of info here. love the salon reviews, the product reviews.

To those that have answered so far, THANK YOU! Trust me, I completely understand that you are not trying to tear us down. That's why I wanted to ask the CurlTalk peeps -- I can count on y'all to offer specific, constructive criticism. Much appreciated. Passing this on to the rest of the team.

An area with ALL the definitions for all the codes[initials] used on this site.

I asked and received a vague answer, [with more], codes that didn't help me at all, [didn't ask about curl types].

Maybe a group of people can be assigned to give assistance to those that come in here looking for help.

I am basically a newbie and I notice that people will post questions and get at least 18 views but not 1 person will answer the question.

When I see the question has gone unanswered for a long time, I will attempt to help them only to have another person respond attempting to correct me. Well, why didn't they answer the person in the first place????

This is not suppose to be the place where a person comes to boast of their success while keeping the secret to it to themselves.

We've been in the throes of redesigning NaturallyCurly.com to make it function better for members. Turns out redesigning a site with 15 years worth of content is no easy task

I wanted to circle back and ask you all what you want to see on NaturallyCurly.com in the future?

What do you think IS working? What ISN'T? Is a certain section of the site not user-friendly? Do we need more wavy hair content? These are all things that have come up in the past and I want to open up the floor for feedback and suggestions.

ALSO: I don't know if you've noticed, but we have a new section of the site: Q&A. Have any of you had a chance to dabble with it? Is it a useful tool, given that we have CurlTalk already? I see CT as a place for conversations, awesome friendships and really connecting. But some people just want a hard and fast answer to their question, which is what Q&A is supposed to be. Yes? No? Hate it? Let me know!

Originally Posted by atx_eve

PS...went to Q&A and saw a whole bunch of questions and no answers...smh!

@rbb - I'm not having any trouble viewing my likes. I am on CurlTalk via PC, and IIRC, you run a Mac... When I click the notification, it takes me to my profile where I can see a list of my posts that people have liked. The most recent is at the top and when I click that, it takes me directly to the post that was liked.

@Lady_Creole - I understand your frustration on posts going unanswered, but as a bit of perspective... I'll sometimes click through to read a post, then find that I don't have an answer for the person. If I don't have an answer, or don't know where to find one, it's not productive for me to reply with "Good question. I have no idea".

Many of the boards are busy, especially General Discussion. Not everyone reads every thread, some people read and don't have an answer, some posts just gradually end up on the bottom of the page where not everyone looks. Some people take a break from posting, but they still like to read threads. I'd suspect this sort of thing happens on most busy forums.

People often ask questions that have already been answered many times, or that are covered in a sticky if only they had used the search function or explored the boards before posting, or even something they could have answered for themselves with a quick google search. Whether right or wrong, sometimes veteran posters get tired of re-typing "I can't tell you what your hair type is without a picture of all your hair, dry and unmanipulated, without product", or other answers they've typed out too many times to count. Some of them, sometimes, will probably click into a thread, then read and move on simply because they don't want to take the time to reply right then. Again, right or wrong, I'd suspect this sort of thing happens on most forums.

@DaniGirl88 - I usually use the main site search to look for specific CurlTalk threads and hadn't really looked into the CurlTalk forum search function (bad GC). The main site search is way more visible than the forum search function in the teal bar, but anyway... If you click Search in the teal bar on CurlTalk, you can search for threads or posts with the given term or even tags. If you choose the advanced search option, you get all kinds of ways to narrow down your results and to sort them. It will allow you to sort results by ascending or descending date, or even only include results within a specific date range (from last visit up to 1 year ago, and newer than or older than). It does run slowly, at least for me, and I had to refresh after it spit out a completely blank results page. However, after a refresh I got a proper results page with useful sort order.

@atx_eve - I was going to get into suggestions here as well, but it ended up turning my post into a novelette. I took the liberty of sending them to you in a pm. Hope that's ok.

I really like the idea of having a Q&A section, especially considering that the CG method can be quite overwhelming in the beginning. However, if I'd be here for the first time trying to find my way into the world of CG, most of the questions listed on the first page would not immediately be helpful. I would want to learn more about the basics: What is the CG method? What is co-washing, low pooing, etc? How do I know what my properties are? A list of abbreviations and a list of ingredients (so for example, an overview of ingredients like sulphates, silicones, polyquats and what they possibly might do, also with some property specific indications), a list of most-used products here on the forum so that people have a better idea of where to start. I think the "browse topics" button is really useful, but as I said, the homepage would not be the most helpful for me as it is now.

One of the things I really like on the iPhone app is that I have an overview with "the latest." I love that it is so easy to see in what topics I participated and which ones have new responses. Perhaps I have overlooked it on the website, but even if this is the case, then I suppose it's still something to consider making better available.

I second the idea for a tagging option. I also love the like-function so I'm hoping that stays!

One of the things I find very convenient is signatures, especially those listing properties. I was wondering if there is a way to make us select our properties in the User CP and then list them below our avatar or something. Perhaps there is also a way to make these options easier to understand. There was this thread once (I've not been able to retrieve it, unfortunately) in which we tried to come up with an easier system since everyone does it differently. We figured that using abbreviations might work, so in my case it would look like this:

[QUOTE=Geek_Chic;2250541][SIZE=3]@rbb - I'm not having any trouble viewing my likes. I am on CurlTalk via PC, and IIRC, you run a Mac... When I click the notification, it takes me to my profile where I can see a list of my posts that people have liked. The most recent is at the top and when I click that, it takes me directly to the post that was liked.

Many of the boards are busy, especially General Discussion. Not everyone reads every thread, some people read and don't have an answer, some posts just gradually end up on the bottom of the page where not everyone looks. Some people take a break from posting, but they still like to read threads. I'd suspect this sort of thing happens on most busy forums.

People often ask questions that have already been answered many times, or that are covered in a sticky if only they had used the search function or explored the boards before posting, or even something they could have answered for themselves with a quick google search. Whether right or wrong, sometimes veteran posters get tired of re-typing "I can't tell you what your hair type is without a picture of all your hair, dry and unmanipulated, without product", or other answers they've typed out too many times to count. Some of them, sometimes, will probably click into a thread, then read and move on simply because they don't want to take the time to reply right then. Again, right or wrong, I'd suspect this sort of thing happens on most forums.
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LadyC -- thanks for the info! i had tried multiple times earlier on to get info on the notifications and it always just brought me to my profile, with no other info, so i finally stopped checking. wish they had said that it had been updated. maybe that would be good, when they fix, update a function they can let us know.

i agree with all you said about getting tired to answer the same question over and over, especially since most of them are not short answers. and answer can be found using a search. or, at times i merely do not have the time to answer, just reading quickly.

it seems like these Q&A are basically the same as curl talk, but not organized so repeated over and over.

I need to make a correction to one of my statements.. I did find suggested ingredients on the hair porosity page. However, I feel that the suggestions are inaccurate (for low porosity hair anyway, since that's what I have - didn't pay much attention to the rest).